The article was dated the twentieth of March, eighteen years ago. Milledgeville, Georgia. College Freshmen Found Alive was the first headline. His pulse reacted. The page taken from the newspaper was yellowed with age. His gaze moved over the typeset words. The water in the bathroom turned on and he glanced that way. With the door open, he watched as she stepped into the shower, the water gliding over her smooth skin. As much as he would enjoy watching, the headline drew his attention back to the article.
The two freshmen were last seen the Friday before spring break, and then found fourteen days later. Dehydrated, bruised and battered, but alive. He turned to the next page. A year later, two students went missing. Different colleges that time. Different dates. But both were found alive fourteen days after their abduction. Dehydrated, bruised and battered. He turned to the next page. Another year passed. Two more women, a nurse and a brand-new mother this time. Both turned up fourteen days later. Same condition as the others. Yet another page showed a similar scenario. The ages of the victims varied slightly; the location of the abductions included Georgia, Alabama and Florida. The time frame the victims were missing was always the same—fourteen days. The condition of the victims upon release was always the same as well.
Not a single one could identify her abductor or the place where she’d been kept.
Carrie returned to the table. This time she wore jeans and a sweatshirt proclaiming her love of rock and roll. Her short blond hair was as untamed as the woman who’d brought him to his knees twice last night. At the bar she’d looked petite and thin but that was far from true. Though she was maybe five-two or -three, she was lean and strong.
“So, what do you think?” She stared at him with those inquisitive blue eyes.
“You’ve been following these abductions all this time? When the first abductions took place—” he turned back to page one “—you had to be what, twelve or fifteen?”
She laughed. “Not quite. I was in college myself. I guess I wanted to be a reporter even then.”
He closed the scrapbook. “What’s your theory on how all these are related? Apparently the Bureau and the local cops have never found any dots to connect.”
“I thought you might be able to tell me. After all, you’re the profiler.”
So she’d done a little checking up on him. He should have expected as much. She was a reporter. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way. I need to read the police reports and crime scene reports. I need to meet and interview the victims.”
“What would you like to know?”
“Are you saying you know one of these victims?”
“May I?” She gestured to the scrapbook.
“Of course.” He pushed it across the table.
She turned to the first page. “Joanna Guthrie.” She exhaled a big breath. “That’s me.”
Her answer wasn’t the one he’d expected. He thought about the note in his pocket. “So your name isn’t Carrie.”
“I had a moment of doubt. I needed some distance to get right with the decision to trust you.”
He laughed a strained sound. “You made that decision while you went for Egg McMuffins and coffee?”
She hesitated, and then nodded. “I did.”
“Well, all right. So tell me this, your collection stops thirteen years ago. What happened thirteen years ago?”
She shook her head. “The abductions continued for five years and then nothing. I don’t know why—they just stopped or the MO changed so drastically I couldn’t connect any new abductions to the old ones—until yesterday.”
Tony exhaled a weary breath. This wasn’t the first time he’d been approached by a crime junkie. The woman could be a fiction writer looking for inspiration for her next novel. He was doubtful that she was actually the victim from the eighteen-year-old abductions. “I see. What is it you think I can do for you, Ms. Guthrie?”
Her pale eyebrows went up in surprise but she didn’t relent. “Help me find the persons who did this. If we find them, we’ll find your niece.”
Tony nodded slowly. His instincts were telling him not to set aside her theory so quickly. “How can you be so sure about that?”
She put her hand on his arm. “I wish I could explain this feeling.” She shook her head. “I just know. I’ve kept quiet about this for eighteen years. If I wasn’t as certain as I can be I sure as hell wouldn’t be talking to you now.”
As much as he wanted to believe her story, how could he risk the distraction from his niece’s case? “I’d like to help you, Carrie—Joanna, but my first priority has to be finding my niece.”
“We have the same goal, Tony. If my calculations are correct, your niece has at most ten days before one of the three of them dies.”
He held up a hand. “Wait a minute. My niece and one other girl are missing. According to your collection of articles, two girls go missing and two girls come back alive. Where is this new theory coming from?”
Joanna or Carrie or whoever the hell she was took another breath and said, “There’s always one who doesn’t come back.”
He held her gaze for a moment. She didn’t flinch. “Not one of these victims—including you—mentioned a third victim or a murder.”
She squared her shoulders as if bracing for what she had to say next. “We were afraid to tell...but, believe me, someone always dies.”
13
8:00 a.m.
Hailey stood in the center of Miles’s bedroom and stared at all the blood. So much for warning him about the fed asking questions.
Motherfucker!
What kind of crazy bitch did he bring home with him? His naked body was stretched out on the bed, hands tied to the iron headboard. He’d been stabbed or halfway gutted, something. She groaned and put her hand over her mouth. There was blood all over the rug by the bed. She hadn’t seen any in the hall but there could be traces there. She’d watched enough cop shows to know there was likely evidence all over the goddamned apartment.
“Holy shit.”
She walked around the apartment. Checked the other bedroom. She shook her head when she saw the computer monitors. “You stupid fuck.”
If he had been videotaping the work they did together he was in seriously deep shit.
She laughed out loud. He was dead. How much deeper could the shit get?
“Holy fuck.” She dug in her bag for a pair of latex gloves. She had learned a long time ago that a pair of gloves to cover her tracks was the most important accessory she could carry in her purse. When she’d tugged them on she awakened the monitors. After several log-in attempts she threw up her hands.
Okay, what was the worst that could happen? The police would decide that Miles had abducted the women he’d videotaped. She doubted she was in any of the videos. The chances that he would have mentioned names was highly unlikely. This was, after all, his own little side venture.
She shook her head. But she couldn’t trust that he hadn’t named names any more than she could trust him not to fuck anything that would hold still long enough. The man was obviously a stupider fuck than she’d known.
Wait, wait—there was that one time. Shit. Shit. Shit. She’d walked in and he’d been recording. He’d promised to destroy all the videos. Obviously he hadn’t done that any more than he’d stopped his side business.
“Idiot.” There had to be a way to resolve this quickly. Every minute she was in this apartment was another one she risked being remembered by a neighbor or a passerby. She would be damned if she would go down with this worthless piece of shit.
Okay. Think. She drew her cell from her bag and went to Google. A couple of minutes later, she had a plan. She went to the bathroom and set the water to running in the tub. The traces of blood there told her whoever had taken the knife to him had showered before leaving the apartment.
She was damned glad she had a gun with her. The crazy bitch could come back.
Water was running. Now she needed something without a ground fault interrupter. A hair dryer wouldn’t work. She hurried to the kitchen and searched the cabinets. Nothing. She moved around the junk on top of the washing machine and found an iron.